Coincidence
by ardavenport
Summary: Luke and Leia share memories of what they have lost.


**COINCIDENCE**

by ardavenport

* * *

"It's gone . . . . . all of it." The man broke down in tears again, his wife silently crying behind him, tears running down her face as she dabbed at her sorrow with a cloth. Other members of the group bowed their heads and wiped their eyes.

"I know." Leia consoled them. "I - - I saw it happen."

The wife gasped, her hand going to her mouth.

Luke averted his eyes as Leia told them the story of Grand Moff Tarkin ordering the destruction of Alderaan. He had heard it before, multiple times, in the past quarter-year. Leia had the story down to a predicable script, with only a few variations in phrasing with each telling. He stood back behind her as Princess Leia, former representative for Alderaan in the now defunct Imperial Senate, spoke to the new arrivals to the Rebel Alliance.

He had escorted the new ships in with Red Squadron, though 'new' was relative. They were more modern than the refurbished spaceships from the Clone Wars that the Rebel Alliance got the last time. The Alliance could not afford to be picky about acquiring the latest equipment or support craft and these were welcome additions to their fleet regardless of their condition.

After handing over his X-wing and R2-D2 to the tech crew, Luke went to the command center, but Leia was on her way to greet the new arrivals, which was not something she usually did for what was mostly a supply run. Han Solo and Chewbacca had some advance knowledge of what was going to happen and bailed out on the meeting, but Luke did not see it coming, especially after Leia intriguingly laid her hand on his arm and leaned close with a low-voiced, "I'm going to need you for this."

The ships, it turned out, were from Alderaan. Out-system when the _Death Star_ destroyed their home world, they had all been on the run ever since. After confirming the calamity, their captains charted courses outside the Empire. There had been more ships at first, but the less nimble craft were taken, gone to the wrong ports and confiscated by the Imperial Fleet. Gradually, the refugees that did not run out of resources or get picked off by pirates found each other in the Outer Rim and formed a sort of convoy. Their appointed leaders made contacts that made contacts that could get them to the Rebel Alliance.

Standing in a group in the gray-on-gray conference room, these leaders presented their ragged resources for service in the fight against the Empire, freighters, passenger ships, prospectors, patrol craft, salvagers, and assorted others. No fighting ships, Alderaan did not have any, but some of them could be outfitted with weapons and stronger shields. The refugees and non-fighters had been moved off to safe allies long before the ships were given the coordinates to meet their escorts to the Rebel main base, but a few skilled passengers had volunteered to serve as support personnel.

"Luke Skywalker?" His name, spoken with a reverent, hushed tone caught his attention. A woman approached, reaching out to him. Leia had stepped aside, giving her a clear path. He carefully extended one hand and she took it. "Thank-you, thank-you," she tearfully breathed, "for destroying that terrible machine." Her grief and gratitude choked off any more words and she reluctantly released him, going back to the others who looked too wary to approach. He really hoped that they would be less awestruck if they were going to be serving on the base.

Leia touched his arm. "Stay," she whispered before going back to the group, nudging them toward the other side of the room, speaking more privately with her fellow Alderaani.

It had been great at first, being the hero who destroyed the Empire's ultimate weapons, the moon-sized battle station. It had been the Rebel Alliance's first big victory. But the novelty wore off quickly, especially when he was repeatedly presented as the hero of the battle of Yavin to prospective allies in the fight against the Empire.

He was given a command right away, appointed red squad leader with a whole roster of duties that swamped his meager experience as a Tatooine moisture farmer. He cringed when he thought of all the things he did not know in those early days, with the other squad members bailing him out from his own mistakes many times over. He was finally starting to feel like he was pulling his own weight, at least with the squad.

He averted his eyes toward a blank wall-screen as more than one pair of eyes from the group of refugees glanced his way and at the lightsaber hanging on his belt. He was beginning to wonder if it was such a good idea for him to wear it. But it never felt right for him to just leave it in his locker.

"The lightsaber is the weapon of a Jedi Knight," Ben Kenobi had told him. The problem was that Luke knew that he was no Jedi Knight. But people were looking at him like he was, and that was making him very uncomfortable.

'You trained with General Obi-Wan Kenobi?' was a common response when people asked about the Jedi weapon.

_Yeah, for one afternoon traveling from the farm to Mos Eisley and whatever Ben could teach me on the trip from Tatooine to the Alderaan system._

He practiced every day what little Ben Kenobi had taught him, and looked for whatever information he could find about the Jedi. The Empire had suppressed everything about them, except for their own negative propaganda. But people still remembered them, especially in the Rebel Alliance. Luke just tried to not be too specific about just how little training he actually had when he asked people about them. Unfortunately, no one seemed to know anything useful for his own training. Jedi were trained and lived in a Temple on Coruscant after being selected at a very early age. Jedi had mind powers. They used lightsabers. They could destroy thousands of battle droids in one skirmish. But no one knew _how_ they did it. Their powers and methods were secrets that only Jedi knew. And Jedi were also supposed to be forbidden to own any possessions or have families. Ben had not mentioned that part about being a Jedi, leaving Luke to wonder how Anakin Skywalker has managed to be his father in the first place.

Leia hugged each one of the refugees before they filed out the door, which slid shut on them. Leia remained standing, her back to him, her pale gray uniform outlined by the hard metaloid portal. Luke waited, but she did not turn around.

Leia put a hand to her mouth and lowered her head. Luke looked down at the inactive terminals on the conference table. Then down at a row of spare chairs along the wall. One of them had a broken pedestal. Another had a missing arm. Conduits snaked along the unfinished ceiling. The room was a big pre-fab box that smelled faintly of machine oil and plastoid. Luke's eyes kept searching for any safe direction to look, other than toward the woman quietly weeping on the other end of the room. The pervasive low hum of the base's power generators and air circulators was hardly loud enough to cover the sound.

'Women are better with that kind of thing,' his Uncle Owen would say whenever there was any tragedy in the settlements around their farm. Aunt Beru would go to console and befriend the mourners, leaving 'her men' to stay back and out of the way.

Luke pressed his lips together and wiped the corners of his eyes. Someone from Anchorhead or one of the other farms would have noticed when the Lars farm stopped communicating and gone to investigate to find the burned homestead and two bodies, charred down to skeletons. Anyone missing would be presumed dead; there would be no search. Even if anyone thought that the Empire had done it, no one would question the likely official story that the farm was destroyed by Sand People, unless they wanted to be next.

Leia took a cloth from her jacket pocket and wiped his face, quietly blew her nose before tucking it away again and turning around.

"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to do that to you."

"Oh, it's okay," he answered without thinking. He took a step toward her, but stopped, awkward and uncertain. This was when the guy was supposed to gallantly step forward and put his arms around the girl and get closer to her. At least, that was what they did in holo-dramas. He could imagine Han Solo doing that, moving in and putting his arms around Leia and taking advantage of a vulnerable moment. Luke could not do it now. It felt wrong.

_/Trust your feelings./_

He startled. In the corner of his eye, he glimpsed a fleeting hologram-like image, a flicker of a familiar face. Staying frozen in place, his eyes sought the source but there was nothing. There never was.

Leia did not seem to notice his sudden distraction. She pulled out a chair and sat down. After an awkward pause he joined her.

"It gets hard sometimes, being reminded of how much we lost," she admitted, looking down at her hands folded on the table.

"I know."

She glanced up at him, her dark brown eyes sad, and he clumsily went on. "I mean, I don't really know much about Alderaan, but the Empire destroying the whole planet like that. That's, that's really a lot." His heart pounded; he felt trapped. He wanted to say that he wished the Empire had destroyed Tatooine instead of Alderann. He certainly would not have missed it and the galaxy would probably be better off. But the sentiment was wrong. Even if hated it, it was still home for some people. And it had been home for his aunt and uncle.

Leia did not seem to mind his lame consolations." The Empire killed your family. That's a lot more intimate. A whole planet is too big to comprehend. I couldn't even bring myself to cry about it until I thought about never being to see my home again. My father." She wiped her eyes again. "Your father . . . was your uncle General Skywalker's brother?"

"Uh, step-brother. Uncle Owen's father married my grandmother. He bought her out of slavery from a trader in Mos Espa."

"Bought her? He bought her?" Leia's tone rose.

He shrugged. "That's Tatooine. He said he fell in love with her on sight when he saw her in the junk shop where she worked. The trader who owned her needed money and he freed her as soon as he had her bondage contract. They got married and he took her home with him." Luke smiled over the old family legend. "My uncle and his cousins were pretty surprised when he brought home a bride instead of some new droids."

"So, your father grew up on the farm, too?"

Luke shook his head. "No, he was gone by then. A spice trader won him on a bet on the pod races. Freed him to be an apprentice on his ship because he was a good mechanic. My grandmother said he was a genius; he could fix or build anything. He built his own pod racer and won the race that the trader won the bet on when he was just a youngling." He exhaled. "At least, that's what my Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru always told me. I guess that was when he went to be a Jedi.

"Did you know your grandmother?"

"No." He looked up. She leaned on her elbows, her head tilted, her long brown hair tied back into braided loops.

"She was killed by Sand People. But Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru knew her. They said she was kind and loved Owen's father. Brought him back to life after his first wife died. And she talked a lot about my father, how he freed himself and got away from Tatooine." Luke had always wanted to be like him and follow him off that backwards dust ball.

"Well, I guess you got away."

He smiled sadly. "Yeah. I just . . . didn't think there wouldn't be anything left to go back to. Just in case I wanted to visit." Uncle Owen had never been a father to him, but he was always fair, most of the time. And Aunt Beru would smile and listen to him when he talked about getting away from Tatooine (unlike his uncle, who could not understand why Luke had no interest in inheriting a subsistence moisture farm on a desert planet in a nowhere sector of the galaxy). Luke could see his aunt and uncles' faces and he wished he could tell them that he was fine.

"I know." Leia laid her hand on his and he froze, his brief homesickness vanishing under her touch. What was he supposed to do now? Hold hands? He pictured Han Solo smoothly sliding his arm around Leia's shoulders with a confident leer on his lips. Luke decided he could do that, without the smug grin. He started to lean back . . .

_/You shouldn't dwell on the past, Luke./_

He grabbed the edge of the table, catching himself from falling back over. He quickly looked to the side but there was nothing. Again.

"Luke?"

"Oh," he pulled away from her and straightened his jacket. "Um, ah, I . . . ah, thought I heard something."

Leia shook her head. "I didn't hear anything. Are you okay?"

He almost flinched when she touched his arm again.

"Fine. I'm fine. I just . . . just thought I heard something."

She gave him a sad smile. "Well, at least you knew something about your parents. I don't know anything about my real parents."

His eyes widened. "What? I-I thought you were - - "

"Bail Organa and my mother adopted me when I was a baby when he was still in the Senate, when the Republic fell at the end of the Clone Wars. But they weren't my biological parents. I barely remember my real mother; she died when I was very young. I always knew I was adopted and when I was old enough to ask my real parents, Father would just say that it was better for me not to know until it was safe. It was 'politically' sensitive. I always accepted that."

"That's what Ben told me." Luke could remember the old man's voice on the ride to Mos Eisley. He lowered his eyes, staring down at the square patterned floor, trying not to think of anything, 'clear his mind' the way Ben had taught him. Sometimes he could feel, almost see the Force. Sometimes not. This time, the voice in his head was just memory. But Ben had been there, just a moment ago, twice. He had heard that voice before, in rare moments when he needed help during his daily practices, the presence of Ben standing right behind him. And when he destroyed the _Death Star_, encouraging him to use the Force.

Luke wondered, did he need Ben's help now?

"He said that Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru couldn't tell me about my father being a Jedi. That the Empire would have come after them if anyone knew."

"He was right, Luke." Leia's voice turned low and serious. "All the Jedi and anyone connected to them were hunted down by the Emperor. It would have been too dangerous. For all I know, that's why my father couldn't tell me anything about my parents." She sighed. "But I suppose all I'll ever know now is my mother's name. Padmé."

"What?" Luke's head snapped around to her. "Your mother's name was Padmé?"

Leia sat back. "Yes. I'm not sure if she told me, or if someone else did, but I've always known. And that was the only thing that my father would confirm. Her name was Padmé."

"My mother's name was Padmé."

Her eyes widened. "Really?"

"Yeah. I mean my aunt and uncle only met her once, when my grandmother died. My aunt liked her. And they said she was rich. At least she had her own ship. My uncle said they just flew off after that. Never came back. They were supposed to have been on the same transport when they died, but I wasn't with them.

"But that wasn't what happened. Ben told me that he who brought me to Tatooine after my mother died. After Darth Vader killed my father. And my mother. But they all said her name was Padmé."

"Oh."

They sat there, looking at each other, their shared coincidence hanging between them.

"Well," Leia huffed and pushed her chair back. "I guess we better get back to work." She got up. Luke got up a little more reluctantly. The moment was gone.

"Uh, Leia?"

She paused in the doorway.

"Do you want to have dinner? If you're not busy. I . . . kind of liked talking."

"Oh." Her face lost any expression and he hoped she did not think that he was trying to take their private moment further than she wanted. He just wanted to talk. That felt right to him.

She smiled again. "Yes, I did, too. I'm not sure I'll be free, but check up with me later."

"Okay."

She left. He stared at the closed door. Then he turned, looking all around the empty conference room, his hands running over the back of a chair. He closed his eyes and breathed deeply, thinking of nothing. Gradually, he saw a very faint glow, the bare outlines of the room. He raised his arm and the glow was different, an aura extending out from his hand to everything around it through the Force.

"Ben?"

He waited for long, slow minutes. He felt like he could touch everything, his senses extending from his fingertips. He knew Ben was there, his voice sometimes in his ear, telling him to reach out with his mind. He reached out, but only felt himself in the otherwise empty room, like a big gray box.

Finally, he exhaled and opened his eyes. He was getting better, but he still needed help. But Ben chose the moments when he would give it.

Luke wondered as he left. Why did Ben think he needed help now?

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**### ### END ### ###**

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**Note: **This story first posted on tf.n on 19-Oct-2013.

**Disclaimer: **All characters and the Star Wars universe belong to Disney and Lucasfilm; I am just playing in their sandbox.


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